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The Pentagon counts Karachi among the “feral, failed cities” that are expected to be the battlefields of the 21^st century. In these millennial war zones, fighting is instigated by poverty, urban squalor, degrading housing conditions, and unemployment. But the rhetoric of the battle cry is framed in terms of political rivalry, ethnic tensions, and sectarianism. As such, the multifaceted problems of ‘failed’ cities such as Karachi pose some of the greatest challenges of the contemporary era.

It is apt to describe Karachi as a battlefield in light of the recent escalation in ‘target killings’—there were over 300 politically or ethnically motivated deaths in the city this year, before the assassination of MQM MPA Raza Haider on August 2 sparked a killing spree that claimed 97 lives, and counting. This violence is a cause for national concern because, as politicians like to remind us, destabilizing Karachi is akin to destabilizing Pakistan. Seventy per cent of the income tax and 62 per cent of the sales tax collected by the government comes from Sindh, and of that, 94 per cent is generated in Karachi. When gunfire and arson attacks shut down the financial capital, the repercussions can be felt across the country.

It was not meant to be this way. In August 1947, the Dawn newspaper celebrated independence by lauding Karachi as a “city with a future” that is “supremely blessed by not having a long history.” Sixty-three years on, Karachi’s history has been marred by recurring waves of violence. In the 1980s, the violence was described as ethnically motivated. In the early 1990s, it was in turn political or sectarian. Now, the nebulous ‘third force’ of militancy is being held responsible for Karachi’s woes. But the underlying causes of strife in the city have been fairly consistent, and they begin with a gross failure in urban planning.

Since the 1950s, Karachi’s integrity as a city has been threatened by schismatic urban policy-making. The first master plan of 1952 called for the separation of the city and the Federal Captial Area. Though it was never implemented, that plan set a precedent for future master plans, which have all emphasized cleaving the city, rather than making it a coherent whole. As early as 1958, the Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan aimed at relocating Karachi’s migrant and working class population at a 25-kilometre distance from the city centre. This initiative transformed Karachi into an area of low-density sprawl, in which the corridors between the port, central business district, markets, and new satellite towns were soon crowded with squatter settlements.

This urban chaos is exacerbated by the fact that the city’s development falls to over 20 government institutions that vie for planning projects and operate independently of each other without guidance from a centralized metropolitan authority. The Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020 acknowledges that this multiplicity of ownership has resulted in a “lack of a holistic and unified vision for the city,” “unplanned and haphazard growth,” poor crisis management, and environmental degradation. In the absence of top-down management of Karachi’s resources, it is no wonder that land mafias have emerged as the most powerful stakeholders in this city of 17 million, and are willing to resort to violence to retain control or their urban territories.

Of course, the need to control land and profit from rampant encroachment has a political dimension. Karachi’s slums are, in essence, teeming vote banks. Political parties are compelled to maintain ties with the ubiquitous land mafia for electoral – if not more sinister – reasons. And the ballots of slum dwellers are most easily secured with the promise of providing water, electricity, roads, and other infrastructure in areas that have been illegally, and thus poorly, developed. This explains the historic triangulation of Karachi’s violence between the ethnically defined MQM, ANP, and PPP parties.

The recent turmoil, too, is believed to have a ethno-political dimension. The dissolution of the local government system, and looming local bodies and general elections, have made political parties acutely sensitive to the city’s transforming territories and changing demographics. Since 2008, the MQM has vehemently opposed the migration to Karachi of Pathans escaping the fallout of military operations against militants in Fata. The city government cited security concerns and the strain on urban infrastructure arising from such migration. But analysts argue that the MQM fears that the Pathan vote bloc will increase as a result of IDP settlement, thereby threatening the branded cialis no prescription hold over the city. Indeed, violence has been most intense in areas such as Qasba and Orangi, where the ANP has electoral ambitions owing to the growth of Pathan communities there.

Against this backdrop, sectarianism – particularly between Sunnis and Shias, and between Deobandis and Barelvis – also proliferates in Karachi. With over 3,000 seminaries and more being established each day, the city is inevitably the site of competing religious ideologies. Since the 1980s, radicalized anti-India and sectarian militants have had a presence in Karachi, drawing on extensive networks among mosques and madrassahs as well as the flow of cash, drugs, and arms through the city to coordinate and finance their various breeds of terrorism. The fallout of this has been many years of deadly sectarian strife.

However, this sectarian element should not be confused with the more recent phenomenon of the Taliban using Karachi as an organizational hub and safe haven. On this point, the government reaction to target killings in August has been muddled. Interior Minister Rehman Malik accused the banned sectarian outfits Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi as well as Taliban militants for Haider’s killing and the following backlash, without mentioning the more historic and deeply rooted causes for such violence.

It was only when the violence could not be stopped that the government more explicitly reached out to the concerned political parties. Still, the code of conduct agreed upon by the MQM and ANP on August 6 emphasizes identifying Taliban militants, members of ‘banned organizations,’ and other ‘terrorists’ in an effort to stem Karachi’s violence.

High-ranking police officials in Karachi agree that there are some ties between sectarian and Taliban outfits, but clarify that these exist at a low logistical rather than ideological level. Many security officials reject MQM claims that the Taliban – with the support of sympathetic political parties – are enmeshed in the city’s major commercial interests, including land. They point out that Taliban presence in the city is more fluid: ‘fixers’ arrive in Karachi and coordinate with local criminal gangs to smuggle arms to the tribal belt and arrange quick funding. For example, according to the Interior Ministry, 80 per cent of all bank robberies in Karachi in 2009 could be traced back to Fata-based individuals with links to the Taliban.

It is unlikely, then, that that the Taliban are key players in the city’s longstanding rivalries over land and other resources. This fact is reiterated in Taliban commander Qari Hussain’s recent radio message to both the MQM and ANP, in which he warns that the Taliban will be forced to get involved if more innocent Pathans are caught in the political and ethnic crossfire. Rather than haphazardly point fingers at militants and risk making the Karachi dynamic even more complex, the government should follow through on investigations to identify Haider’s killers and determine the extent of Taliban infiltration in Karachi.

Given that Karachi’s ongoing conflict is hydra-headed, initiatives to stem the violence must be framed in both the short- and long term. To bring an immediate stop to the target killings, police should be deployed across the city and mobilized to enforce the ban against displaying weapons. Mohalla committees that have been revived as a result of talks last week between the MQM and ANP should be tasked with maintaining peace on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood level – such committees are well situated to ensure that people, irrespective of their ethnicity, are able to pass safely through different areas, ride buses, and get to work.

The government should also make a concerted effort to register all new migrants to the city and issue CNICs to those who have been living in Karachi for several years (if not decades) by now. This administrative exercise will help dispel competing myths of shifting demographics, and give political parties a clear sense of the size and location of their various constituencies.

Ultimately, in the long run, Karachi’s problems can only be solved through major urban planning projects that regulate large swathes of the city’s land along with other urban resources. The city must be planned in an equitable and sustainable manner that discourages encroachments and arbitrary evictions, improves living conditions, and brings people closer to their workplaces. Only then can Karachiites begin to live in safety, with dignity.